Chapter 5: Building Your Plot

Given knowledge of the structure of a plot, how does an author develop a plot upon which to build a story that will take a reader on a satisfying fictional journey?

The following suggestions will give you some ideas on how typical YA plots unfold.

The action of the story should begin as close to the beginning of the novel as possible. Long expositions and backstory will quickly lose the interest of young adult readers. An author who adds a prologue to his novel is kidding himself if he thinks the reader won’t recognize it for what it is: backstory. The characters should have a short period of stability, reach the incitement point, establish the conflict, and take off running toward the climax as soon as possible. Backstory and exposition should be added a little at a time as the story progresses at points where it is required to move the plot forward.

A character in a particular situation will react in a wide variety of ways based on his personality and the relationships he may have to other characters and the setting. If the entire plot is worked out in advance and the author simply peoples it with characters to carry out the action, the characters will seem stiff and unreal because they are being forced away from who they are and how they would naturally react.

Characters do not have to have a crisis or deal with threats every few pages. Too many characters, story lines, subplots, and too much action will quickly lose younger readers. Breaks in the action are important for the characters to reflect on what has happened, consider the current situation, and plan their next move. This will help sustain the suspense and ramp up the anticipation of watching the character move into the next action scene. The author should focus on the protagonist and his reactions to advance the story.

Be sure the reader has all the information he needs to understand the plot and the action, but not so much that he knows the resolution of the conflict before the climax is reached. Anticipation creates empathy with the characters and keeps the reader involved in the story to find out what happens.

Imagine the plot as a wave flowing through the story with distinct patterns of up-and-down motions. The character begins in calm water as he considers the situation. As tension builds, he is on the upward slope of the wave, and at the crest a climax occurs and he drops back down into calm water. Each climax crest becomes larger and larger until the final, highest crest at the story climax. The increasingly larger waves sustain the tension until the end.

This is a requirement for quality young adult fiction. In most YA novels the characters are young. Psychologically, physiologically, and emotionally, these characters are not adults and do not have adult maturity. Dealing with the conflict and the climax will add a layer of experience to their personalities that must be reflected in their behavior at the end of the novel. It’s essential that the author make the young reader a part of the story so that he can live vicariously through the protagonist and have the same experiences. In the end, the question with young adult fiction is, What did the reader carry away from the story? How is he different?

You’ve had a chance to think through how to start the story and have even thought about your characters and how they will factor into the plot. Now you’ll begin working on how to build your plot. Let’s take a look at the process of storyboarding.

Storyboarding is a tool that can be used to arrange a story into a plot. The method is to take a stack of index cards and write a major scene from the story on each. If possible, include the opening scene and the climax or ending scene. In this way the story can be bracketed between the beginning and the end and not wander away. Next, lay the cards out in the sequence you’ve envisioned for the story. Then stand back and examine the story in terms of the seven steps of plot action and how they relate to the story line. Where does the story and the conflict begin? Where is the crisis and climax? Can the cause and effect of the characters’ motivations be seen, and are they in the correct order? By moving the cards around and adding cards as needed, the story line can be manipulated to closely connect to the plot.

A storyboard will clearly illustrate the movement of the plot from the stable ground situation to conflict and then to climax. Some commonly used patterns of movement found in stories include movement from:

- THE THIRTY-SIX DRAMATIC SITUATIONS -

These situations were compiled by Georges Polti in the 1800s and were based on earlier work of Carlo Gozzi. Dramatic situations are not plots. They are categories of sources of conflict in a story that can be included in a plot. Most plots combine several of these situations to create the conflict that drives the story. Since Polti created his original list, it has been modified and massaged by many writers, but the essential list remains intact although perhaps renamed. Recently a thirty-seventh situation has been added to the list, which is listed at the end. Listed on the following pages are the dramatic situations with the character types that would normally be associated with the situation.

• Supplication: Someone who needs help, usually due to the antagonist

• Deliverance: Someone who needs help and someone to rescue that person

• Vengeance of a crime: Someone is the avenger and someone else is the criminal

• Vengeance taken for kin upon kin: Someone is the avenging kinsman, the guilty kinsman, someone to remember the victim, and a relative

• Pursuit: Someone is the fugitive and the pursuer

• Disaster, vanquished: Characters include the vanquished power, the victorious enemy, and the messenger

• Falling prey to cruelty/misfortune: Characters are the unfortunate and the master

• Revolt: Someone is the tyrant and the conspirator

• Daring enterprise: Someone is the bold leader and the adversary

• Abduction: Someone is the abductor, the guardian, and the victim

• The enigma: Someone is the seeker, the interrogator

• Obtaining: Characters include the solicitor, the adversary, opposing parties, and the arbitrator

• Enmity of kin: Someone is the malevolent kinsman or the hated or hating kinsman

• Rivalry of kin: Characters are the preferred kinsman and the rejected kinsman

• Murderous adultery: Someone is the adulterers and the betrayed spouse

• Madness: Someone is the mad person or the victim

• Fatal imprudence: Characters include the imprudent and the victim

• Involuntary crimes of love: Someone is the lover, the beloved, and the revealer

• Slaying of kin unrecognized: Someone is the slayer or the unrecognized victim

• Self-sacrifice for an ideal: Characters include the hero and the person sacrificed

• Self-sacrifice for kin: Someone is the hero, the kinsman, or the person sacrificed

• All sacrificed for passion: Someone is the lover, the beloved, or the person sacrificed

• Necessity of sacrificing loved ones: Someone is the hero or the beloved victim

• Rivalry of superior versus inferior: Characters include the superior rival and the inferior rival

• Adultery: Characters include the deceived spouse and the adulterers

• Crimes of love: Someone is the lover, the beloved, and the victim

• Discovery of the dishonor of a loved one: Characters include the dishonorer and the guilty one

• Obstacles to love: Someone is lovers and people who stand in their way

• An enemy loved: Characters include the beloved enemy, the lover, and the hater

• Ambition: Someone is the ambitious person, the adversary

• Conflict with a god: Someone is the immortal, the mortal

• Mistaken jealousy: Someone is the jealous, the object of jealousy, the supposed accomplice, and the author of the mistake

• Erroneous judgment: Someone is the mistaken one, the victim of the error, the author of the error, the guilty person

• Remorse: Characters include the culprit, the victim, the interrogator

• Recovery of a lost one: Someone is the seeker, the one found

• Loss of loved ones: Someone is the kinsman slain, the kinsman spectator, the executioner

• Mistaken identity: Characters include the mistaken one, the victim of the mistake, and the author of the mistake

Combining several of these situations will assist an author to develop a plot that will sustain a novel. These dramatic situations can be used to create plot twists, give the reader insight into a character, create a dilemma for the protagonist, create a subplot, form the basis of a scene, or form any other cause-and-effect situation to move the plot toward the climax.

When designing a plot, there are a number of critical factors that will directly affect how well the plot works to support the story. If an author has a plot designed, the following ten points will serve as a guide to assess how well the plot may work.

Every element of the story should have significance. If it does not advance the plot, it shouldn’t be in the story. Names, places, actions, and events must have a specific purpose to the plot. Unneeded detail slows the pace of the story to a crawl. Young adult readers expect a story to move along quickly and are not interested in literary flourishes or exhibitions of the author’s erudition.

Once the point of no return has been reached, the plot must proceed based on the characters’ reactions to the event, which will set up the next event. At this point the author cannot introduce another chain into the series from another direction or have the protagonist step out of character with a plausible reason.

The objective that the protagonist is trying to achieve must be important to that character. At the same time, the author must allow the reader to understand what the character’s motivation is that makes that goal so important. In this way the reader can share the emotion of the challenges and successes of overcoming the obstacles that stand in the way of attaining that goal.

In young adult novels the protagonist rarely acts alone. The other characters in the story each have their own agendas, which may conflict with the agenda of the protagonist. In all cases the other characters should influence, more or less, the behavior of the protagonist as he follows his own agenda.

The real story begins at the point of no return. Until then the character has the option of not reacting to the incitement and returning to the stable ground level. Once the point of no return is passed, the character’s world has changed forever and he must react to the new situation, propelling him toward the climax.

The first part of the plot before the point of no return is a brief look into the future—a teaser for the reader to encourage him to keep reading. The ending of the story should have the elements that were presented to the reader at the beginning. The plot is one long, unbroken chain of interconnected events where initial causes of the protagonist’s quest can be seen along the entire length.

All stories are about the relationship of an individual to society. In a comic story an individual is isolated and achieves acceptance through a series of events or creates his own society where he can be integrated and accepted. A tragic story is one in which the protagonist is part of the society and becomes isolated. In either case the plot should keep the reader in suspense until the end. If the reader knows it’s a comedy, the exact nature of the climax should be a surprise. On the other hand, if the protagonist is doomed to failure, his downfall should come from a cause the reader already knows about and understands.

At the beginning of a story, even for a short time, the protagonist is passive and simply reacting to events. At some point in the story, he should take charge and actively attempt to change the events happening around him. This helps to define the protagonist’s character and puts him in the position for more serious conflicts, all leading to the final climax. The plot cannot carry a passive character—the character has to be at the head of the action.

The plot is the road map of the story, and every event and the protagonist’s response to that event should provide insight into his character. Plot elements provide opportunities for the characters to be brave, stupid, timid, generous, caring, or demonstrate any other human characteristic. This behavior fleshes out the character and makes him three dimensional and more real to the reader.

Ironic plots must be handled carefully, because they can create a situation where the story ending becomes disappointing. Taking a goal that is strongly desired by the protagonist and turning it into a Pyrrhic achievement can be a powerful tool, but with young adult readers it must be an integral part of the ending that can be easily understood.

- ADVICE FROM PUBLISHERS ROW -

Phoebe Yeh, vice president and publisher of Crown Books for Young Readers:

“Everyone wants to read a good story. You can’t have a good story if the story line doesn’t hold up or if the plotting is ‘problematic.’ When I read manuscripts and books, the writing needs to engage me in some way. If I am considering the story line, it must be interesting, exciting, dramatic. Something about the writing needs to make me want to know what happens next and to make me want to keep on reading. This is not just moving your characters from point A to B to C. The protagonist has to evolve along the way.

“In the tween novel We Can’t All be Rattlesnakes by Patrick Jennings, Crusher, a gopher snake who is mistaken for a rattlesnake, protests her captivity by developing an unlikely friendship with Breakfast, a mouse, instead of making a meal out of Breakfast. The suspense and the evolving friendship keep the story moving along.

“In the young adult novel Freaked by J. T. Dutton, even though his prep school life is falling apart yet again, Scotty Loveletter will not be deterred from the one great passion in his life—his love for the Grateful Dead and his quest of leaving no stone unturned to get to the next Dead concert. Will he or won’t he make it? These two novels are examples that do not demonstrate the pitfalls of bad plotting. They are not overwritten. They do not have convoluted plots that don’t make sense and aren’t logical. The plots do not meander. And they both have a resolution that is believable and satisfying.”

Maintaining suspense in the plot as the story unwinds is essential to maintain the interest of the reader. This can be accomplished by keeping the reader’s anticipation fresh and presenting additional complications and conflict. Each step forward must be met with additional difficulties that will cause the next event. As the protagonist deals with each of these events, one after the other, the events will collectively direct the protagonist to the climax.

The reader must sympathize with what is happening to the protagonist and keep reading to find out what will happen. A careful balance must be maintained between giving the reader too little or too much information so that the final climax can be set up and used to bring the story to a satisfactory end. There are four factors to consider when planning a plot in order to sustain the suspense through the length of the story.

The reader must know that something bad is going to happen to one or more of the characters—usually to the protagonist or characters closely associated with him—as a result of conflict. The reader must have a clear idea of what the protagonist faces and may even have knowledge that the character does not have. Over the next chapters of the story, the reader will be given time to anticipate the event and consider possible outcomes before the author shows him exactly what happens.

Bad things happen to good characters—the resolution of the conflict does not always result in a happy ending. The author must convince the reader that a disastrous outcome may result from a particular conflict, and the more sympathetic the character is to the reader, the more impact negative results will have on the reader. The ticking time bomb of the fate of the protagonist can be completely defused if the reader knows that the author will come up with a plot device to extricate the character.

Odd, unexpected things happen in real life, so they can certainly happen in a story, but they should be used sparingly and with extreme care. An author can get away with an unexpected confluence of events in two situations. The first is when the fact of the coincidence is one of the incitement forces of the story. A chance event sets off a chain reaction of events that leads the protagonist into a conflict that is not resolved until the climax of the story. The second use is when the coincidence makes things worse for the protagonist. A coincidence will seem contrived when it improves the character’s situation and should be avoided.

Another, more specific form of coincidence is the JITNOT situation. The classic JITNOT is the situation where just as the wagon train settlers are about to be wiped out by the Indians, out of nowhere the cavalry rides over the ridge. An author who uses this plot device tells the reader that no matter what happens, he will create a JITNOT to save the character in every situation. From that point on the suspense has vanished, because the reader knows the outcome of the story will be in the protagonist’s favor. This is the literary equivalent of the author allowing readers to peek at the answers in the back of the book.

In any suspenseful situation the reader should know the identity of the character, the point of view of the narration, where the character is and what he is doing, and enough of the background information known to that character so that the reader can understand the character’s action. Not providing this information confuses the reader and should not be done unless there is an overwhelming reason. Holding back does not create suspense; it creates annoyance and negatively changes the reader’s satisfaction with the story.

Sometimes the plot is not successful, and after the climax the ending of the story is unsatisfactory. Common faults that can cause the plot and, ultimately, the story to fail include the following.

One of the defining characteristics of young adult fiction is the change in the characters resulting from the conflict in the story. The plot in all its forms is about how life affects the characters. After the climax, the reader must be able to see that the protagonist (and occasionally other characters) has learned something, grown, or changed in some way that is reflected in his behavior. A reader should be able to look back from the climax and trace the cause and resulting effects that have had an impact on the character. The character must now act differently than he did at the beginning. The author should apply indirection and not tell the reader either through the narration or the voice of the character how the character has changed. “I faced [write a conflict here] as a boy and became a man” is an extremely poor ending and borders on preaching. The character must show that he is different.

At the end, does the reader discover that the conflict really wasn’t that important after all? The conflict faced by the protagonist must involve a decision that may be ethical, be against his better judgment, affect another character, or in some way cause something terrible to happen if he doesn’t attain it. The goal of the character must be something that he wants at all costs and that will have significant effect on the character’s world.

Some endings have been overused and abused so much that they alienate the reader. These include a protagonist who is not what he seems—a girl instead of a boy; the “it was only a dream” ending and its variation in a fantasy novel where the protagonist is dragged back to the real world; and the “everyone lived happily ever after” ending. Few things in life are entirely all good. Tempering a successful ending with a touch of failure adds depth to the ending and causes the reader to stop and pause to consider the theme of the novel.

This is not so say that an author cannot use these endings if he comes up with a unique, interesting variation, but he does it at his own risk.

There are a number of possible sources of this problem. First, the ending is obvious or has been predictable since the beginning. Second, the author has not planned ahead for the ending, which should be the largest, most dramatic climax of the story, and instead has tacked on a weak, irrelevant, or illogical ending. Third, the outcome is not sufficiently important to the characters, or after many pages of buildup the resolution to the problem is trivial. Young adult fiction requires the ending to have a significant impact on the characters to the point where their lives have been changed.

Many authors attempt to use their story to make a statement about society, politics, religion, morals, values, and many other ethical areas. This must be handled with great care and under only two circumstances. The first is when the statement to be made is important and far-reaching. Issues such as poverty and racial injustice as handled by Mark Twain and Charles Dickens are good examples. The second is when the point is made by showing it through the interactions of the characters and the setting. An example is the novel To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. The tragedy of racial discrimination is vividly illuminated through the reactions and emotions of Jem and Scout. The reader understands what the author is saying through the eyes of the characters. On the other hand, when an author uses the characters’ voices to make his own personal statement, it becomes preaching. At that point the author might as well get out his soapbox, climb up on it, and harangue the reader to convince him of the righteousness of his cause.

A meandering story line is a result of the author not having a clear idea of where the plot is going. One solution is to give the protagonist a stronger motivation and increase the difficulty of success. What terrible things will happen to the characters if the conflict is not successfully resolved? A storyboard can improve a wandering plot by helping the author identify the beginning and the end of the story before writing a word. If there is a definite ending in sight at all times, the story line is less likely to veer off track and take unnecessary side trips.

Coincidences and JITNOT situations are difficult to handle in the body of the story, but they are devastatingly ruinous to a story ending. One reason for this is that the protagonist has devoted his entire effort to dealing with the conflict, only to have the resolution jerked out of his hands by an outside, unexpected force. In young adult literature, an ending like this is too much like having the protagonist’s parents show up at the critical point and take care of the problem whether he wants them to or not. A second reason is that the solution to the conflict must come from the internal chain of events that started at the beginning of the novel at the incitement point. If the story is not allowed to progress to its logical conclusion, without external interference, what was the point of the story?

A story may be confusing with too many characters and subplots and too much action. In young adult fiction, the author must sharply focus on the main character and use subplots and other characters to dramatize and highlight the action of the protagonist.

- ADVICE FROM PUBLISHERS ROW -

Wendy Lamb, publisher of Wendy Lamb Books:

“If your secondary characters dilute the focus of the main story because reader feels distracted and can’t keep track of them, then you have too many. Tell us a story. Make us keep reading. Be in charge.”

At the end, all subplots and themes should be wrapped up in a neat package. A reader should never finish a novel wondering what happened to a character or situation that was important at the beginning and now has inexplicably disappeared. Like a surgeon, an author should count all his tools at the end to be sure everything that was used throughout the operation is accounted for at the time he closes.

This Latin phrase describes a plot device that originated in Greek tragedy. When the plot was so hopelessly tied up that no solution seemed possible, a crane lowered actors in a basket (who were usually portraying gods) onto the stage, and they would then straighten everything out, bringing the play to a close. When an author paints his characters into a corner and then a plot device suddenly appears to rescue them, all of the suspense and anticipation is lost. The final solution to the conflict and complications of the protagonist must always arise internally from the previous action of the story. A deus ex machina climax should cause the reader to consider suing the author for storytelling fraud.

The plot structure looks complete and the characters have resolved the conflict, but the story seems to be rather pointless. This problem occurs when the conflict the protagonist faces is not important enough or does not affect him deeply enough. It can also arise when the reader is not empathizing well enough with the chief characters and, as a result, does not care about the ultimate outcome of the story. These stories are often found in genres where the plot has fossilized into a formula and the author has not spent enough time developing the characters’ personalities. If the author does not care deeply about the lives of his characters and how they resolve the conflict, the reader won’t either.

When it comes to plot, don’t force the issue of uniqueness too much. It’s not your plot that needs to be unique, it’s your story—remember, story is the overarching sequence of events as the reader imagines them to have taken place, in the order in which they would have occurred in life. Creating a believable chain of events that your characters can react to and struggle against is the key to constructing a memorable plot.